…mostly it's photos of Vankleek Hill.

Geeking out over all the camera options I will probably never use again

That flower is tiny. Like, maybe, an inch across. And there was a wind. And I was using the macro feature, and I think my hands were shaking, and there might have been someone screaming something in my ear about wanting my wallet… and, if my notes are right, I’m pretty sure my 2.5-year old son was repeatedly bashing my genitals with his dump truck.

But, in the end, the photo came out in focus. How? Dual image stabilizers that work. Which is completely opposite from the DIS in the Fuji BlAh240, which I experimented with a few weeks ago, and was designed by people who hate people.

The Canon has all of the regular features that come standard with every camera today — portrait, face recognition, macro, blah, blah, blah. But it also comes with so many more incredible little weird settings, a couple of which I’ll probably use frequently, but most of which I’ll never use again.

Some of the results from testing are below (left to right, top to bottom): toy car (top third, bottom third out of focus), vivid colour, colour desaturation (focus on one colour, everything else is b/w), toy camera (burnt out edges), slow synchro flash (my favourite) and fish eye.

I don’t like using software to modify an image, unless I’m specifically making a design or art of some kind, so I doubt I’ll ever scar an image with the fish eye. But they are fun ways to keep the kids interested in the camera, and taking photos.

…the weirdest setting is “underwater”, which modifies the aperture and adds a special filter which (apparently) makes it possible to get a clear image while shooting underwater. Which is great, except the camera isn’t even water resistant to the depth of a sweaty shirt.

3 thoughts on “Geeking out over all the camera options I will probably never use again”

Regarding the underwater settings, my guess is that it is probably just the same interface for all their cameras, some are waterproof.
There is too many “shooting modes” on my digital camera and the macro ( up close) setting does jack sh*t. “Dual is mode” what is this? Documentation is sketchy in the manual, or there is too much to memorize.

The manual for mine is 241 (!) 8.5 x 11 pages long, I haven’t even opened it yet… there’s a dial on my camera, each of the 12 settings on the dial has (roughly) ten to twelve settings — whether it’s aperture / ISO settings, or the ones I listed above, or a hundred more. Personally, I preferred my Kodak C533, which had about eight settings in total, or my manual / real cameras.

The DIS, or dual image stabilizers, are how the camera eliminates camera shake. It’s not perfect, and it doesn’t cure the really bad stuff — like taking a photo in a car travelling on a dirt road, but it helps a lot if you have hands that shake.

The only thing the Fuji blah-240 I was dicking around with two weeks ago was good for was its macro and “super macro” features. Using the telephoto for anything was a massive failure because its DIS was so useless.

The best I’ll be able to do with this camera is file away five or six of the most relevant or fun bits — like the ‘toy car’ and ‘slow synchro flash’ and discover the rest next year when I’m finally comfortable with the camera.

It has one setting that I haven’t used at all yet, but I really like the idea: once it’s on, when I take a photo, it takes a few seconds of video before and after the shot. When I’m done shooting for the day, it puts all of the videos together into one .MOV file, so I have a little movie of everything I shot that day. How fucking crazy is that?

…it also has a ‘stealth’ mode — not kidding. Turn it on and everything automatically goes quiet. So I can shoot without being heard. Weird..?

Basically I bought the camera for the optical and digital zoom capability, the DIS (which works from macro to telephoto), it can fit in my pocket, the f3.5 lens, a decent flash and the macro.

regarding”it also has a ‘stealth’ mode — not kidding.”
Yes mine does as well. It is a necessary setting to shoot wildlife. It is the only way I can take a photo of a bird like a Heron as when they hear the “beep”s and such from the camera, they fly away.